Location: Canarvon Gorge / Yellowbank, Queensland
Event: Yowie Sighting
Date: Nov, 1984
Since 1979, I have been involved in the exploration industry, mostly in oz with some overseas work. Throughout the years I have seen a substantial amount of isolated Australian bushland where 95 percent of our work takes place.
Prior to Christmas in 1984 I was 23 years old. That year I witnessed what I thought always to be just stories and myths, a yowie.
It was that year that changed my belief in what normal people perceive as tales and hoaxes.
It was roughly about two o'clock in the afternoon, mid to late November 1984. I was working as an Explosives pre-loader for a seismic company. At the time we were about to shift camp closer to the Canarvon Gorge from Yellowbank near Injune. As my normal tasks were completed, I was assigned the duty of towing parts of our accommodation to the new work area / camp close to the Canarvon turnoff.
I was on my last trip not too far out of Injune towing an 8 berth accommodation donger as we called them. I was driving a diesel land cruiser Ute which made things pretty slow about 40kph, as i came around a corner and started up a large hill, i noticed ahead on the right hand side of the road a large shape which I first mistook for a strange looking tree.
The distance would have been 300m away, as I drove slowly up the hill closer, the shape suddenly walked out on to the road and turned towards me. I then started thinking and laughing to myself as I assumed that two jerks were playing games to road users. I thought that one guy was on the others shoulders and the two of them were in one bear suite.
This part of my experience still troubles me 26 years later and something that will stay with me till my death. As I approached and the distance between me and what I thought was the two larikins slowly shortened. It suddenly swung its torso back around and began to stride of to the other side of the road. When it did this manoeuvre I was then close enough, to my shock and disbelief, I saw clearly muscles ripple on its torso and arms, and when it walked i knew that what I was looking at was real. I will never forget that feeling to my soul and the sensation I felt up my spine. When i think even now about it i still feel it. Logic was removed from my life that day.
Its height was 12 to 14 feet high, it had very large limbs, with large thigh and arm muscles. The head though, was not normal to its body size, being smallish and rose to a conical type on top of its forehead, much different to human heads. Body hair was not real thick but was definitely apparent more so on its back at the top. To me it would easily have been capable to rip a man's arm right off.
As it walked and disappeared into the sandy pine / scrub it would have been then about 75m away from me. But it disappeared like a chameleon as its hair and body colour was the same as the tree bark and stumps. I assume that due to how slow I was traveling it had not heard my vehicle at first. I was so intrigued by what I had seen, I pulled the vehicle over, got out and began to scan the bushland where it had gone. I did not see it again.
I thought no one will believe this, I was excited and scared at the same time. So I began to look for some footprints in the sand while looking up and scanning the bush at the same time, I had a strange sensation that it was watching me and was close by, a feeling that I have never felt till that day. Then I smelt the most horrible stench like a rotting corpse. Instantly I remembered watching one of those bigfoot documentaries about the smells that they produce when you are to close them.
I then realised in my excitement as the hair on my neck was stiffing that i was about 80m from my vehicle. I ran as fast as I could, started that vehicle and drove away a changed man.
I will not camp-out alone at night no more, something I used to enjoy.
I have since realised when I was a boy, I had a strange incident when camping with 6-7 friends on motorcycles near mount flinders Ipswich, we were scared off by something so ferocious, less than 20m away from us, growling grunting and shaking trees violently, which made some of my friends cry with fear as we were leaving.
It was basically demanding that we leave. I was drunk so it didn't worry me too much then. But since 1984, I know better.
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